Asking him one day if it was possible for persons in authority, whether
in the world or in the cloister, to practise the virtue of obedience,
he replied: "Certainly, and they can do so far more perfectly and more
heroically than their subjects."
Then, seeing my astonishment at this apparent paradox, he went on to
explain it in the following manner: "Those who are obliged, either by
precept or by vow, which takes the place of precept, to practise obedience,
are, as a rule, subject only to one superior. Those, on the other hand,
who are in authority, are free to obey more widely, and to obey even in
commanding, because if they consider that it is God Who puts them over the
heads of the others, and Who commands them to command those others, who
does not see that even their commanding is an act of obedience? This kind
of obedience may even be practised by princes who have none but God set
over them, and who have to render an account of their actions to Him alone.
I may add that there is no power on earth so sublime as not to have, at
least in some respects, another set over it. Christian kings render filial
obedience to the Roman Pontiff, and the sovereign Pontiff himself submits
to his confessor in the Sacrament of Penance. But there is a still higher
degree of obedience which even Prelates and the greatest among men may
practise. It is that which the Apostle counsels when he says: _Be ye
subject to every human creature for God's sake_.[1] Who for love of us
not only became subject to the Blessed Virgin and to St. Joseph, but made
Himself obedient to death and to the death of the Cross, submitting Himself
in His Passion to the most sinful and degraded of the earth, uttering not a
cry, even as a lamb under the hand of him who shears it and slays it. It is
by this universal obedience to every creature that we become all things to
all men in order that we may win all to Jesus Christ. It is by this that we
take our neighbour, whoever he may be, for our superior, becoming servants
for our Lord's sake."
[Footnote 1: 1 Peter ii. 13.]